086: Keto-Green™ Q&A w/ Dr. Anna Cabeca

Keto-Green is the way of eating, and living I developed when I entered perimenopause, and I’ve shared it in the hope that it helps other women combat the changes their bodies go through during this time. With a foundation in the keto diet, I emphasize alkaline foods and ensuring your body maintains a neutral pH. Not only has KetoGreen helped women manage their changing bodies, many of lost weight following it!

In this episode, I talk about why you need to test your urine to make sure you’re in - and staying in - ketosis. When our bodies metabolize in ketosis, we’re functioning at our best, and this promotes weight loss, as well.

However, while it’s important to stay in ketosis, it’s also super vital that we’re maintaining a neutral pH level. By eating alkaline foods and regularly testing our urine’s pH levels, we can keep some of the side effects of the keto diet at bay.

I also cover what a typical Keto-Green plate consists of, and what foods we should all be striving to eat every single day. Eating a variety of food is important, but we all need to make sure we’re consuming lots of leafy greens daily.

Then I take some questions from within my KetoGreen Community on Facebook and answer them! These questions are so insightful and have definitely brought up points that so many people on the Keto-Green diet have considered. What can help one can usually help many! If you have any questions about following the Keto-Green diet, definitely join my Facebook group and share with the community.

Do you know when your body is in ketosis? How do you maintain a healthy pH balance to do your best to avoid symptoms like keto breath and keto crotch? What kind of foods are you eating on your Keto-Green diet?

In This Episode:

What Keto-Green actually is

How Keto-Green can help reduce the changes caused by perimenopause

What changes perimenopause can cause in your body

What benefits does an alkaline urine pH have for the body

What kind of vegetables you should eat on the Keto-Green diet

How being in ketosis helps your body lose weight and balance hormones

What a typical Keto-Green looks like and where you can find some delicious recipes

Hello everyone, welcome to Couch Talk. Today I want to talk about what is Keto-Green anyway? I get so many questions, what does Keto-Green mean? Can I go Keto-Green? I've had issues with hypoglycemia all my life, should I do Keto-Green? What do you mean by the Keto-Green plate? How is it different from the ketogenic diet? How does it help hormonal symptoms?" And the questions go on. And so, I want to discuss some of those questions today and talk about what Keto-Green actually is, and what it means to you. What we've seen, what I've seen as I discovered it myself as I was going through perimenopause, and needed to stop the destruction that was happening to my body, including the unreasonable weight gain, right?

That five, ten, 20 pounds overnight, despite not doing anything different, so I would say that when my patients would tell me that and be kind of skeptical and when it happened to me, sure enough without doing anything different the changes in perimenopause with hormonal fluctuations can create quite, quite some destructive side effects. Including hot flashes, memory loss, brain fog, irritability, anxiety, sleeplessness, night sweats and the list goes on. And that's why I discovered and figured out how to make ketogenic plan work for me to balance hormones with the key components of alkalinity getting out body nourished and in a healthy, natural, peaceful state in so many ways and adding in the benefits of ketosis and that from there birthed my Keto-Green way, which I write about in my book The Hormone Fix. The Hormone Fix is a US Today bestseller and national bestseller, still number one on Amazon for menopause and has been in women's health, it has been number one in textbooks. I mean, you just name it and that's been going on for the past three, four months now since it's been released in February of this year, so really pleased to share that with you.

So let's go into it. What is Keto-Green? Let's start there and we'll start with that concept of how we ourselves can get Keto-Green and what that looks like. So first, Keto-Green means getting out body into a state of ketosis and working to get our body nourished so that our urine PH is alkaline, and what does that mean when our urine PH is alkaline? Well research has shown that having a urine PH of seven or better on average, so seven, 7.5 on average, what we see are healthy bones, we see decrease in metabolic syndrome and diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, inflammatory disease, aches and pains and really what we've seen in our community, our Keto-Green community and my magic menopause community are improvement in symptoms all the way around in as little as ten days we've seen over 90% improvement in symptoms with over 57% reduction in symptom scores in just ten days, so that's been really excellent.

So ketosis, when I talk about the keto part of the Keto-Green, for the alkaline part of Keto-Green, alkalinity we think living in nature. Think of the amazon jungle, think of sipping sparkling water, listening to the waterfall, lush greens around you or hiking through nature, the woods, the mountains, sitting out on the beach. So alkalizing stress reducing environments that nourish our body in so many ways, which we get a lot of nature, right? We get more than vitamin D from the sun and we get a lot of just grounding and healing energy from nature as well, but foods that are alkalizing are all our vegetables and pretty much all our fruits. Now in our Keto-Green way, I don't allow very much fruits, although seasonally and feasting days you're welcome to indulge because sugar is sugar. Yet there are many antioxidants and benefits of fruits, and so I'll share some of that. I share that in my book as well.

Now, alkalinizing vegetables, all your greens and for the keto alkaline we want to stay low carbohydrate. So low sugar, low carbohydrate and what does that mean? So all our dark leafy greens from collards and kale and beat greens. Beat greens are one of my favorite alkalinizing vegetables. Whenever I'm having trouble, I'm acidic, I will saute up some amazing beat greens and that helps right away. So those are certainly great ways, great things to add on a daily basis into our diet. Herbs like maca are very alkalinizing. Tumeric and sprouts, like broccoli sprouts are part of the Keto-Green way as well as avocado. Now, the ketosis part because you hear keto, keto everywhere, right? And the ketosis part really comes from the concepts of a ketogenic diet but more so getting our body into ketosis using fat for fuel producing ketones to use. Ketones cross our blood brain barrier, now this is critical as we're aging because our brain is using glucose for fuel or ketones for fuel. And ketones are think of glucose is to gasoline as ketones are to jet fuel.

So if we think of it that way, we want to use that jet fuel, really highly productive, boosting energetic fuel source, that's pretty powerful. And that's important. In order to get our body to a state of ketosis, especially as we're getting older and less metabolically efficient, we've got to exercise our ketosis muscle. So low carbohydrates, higher fats but healthy fats, your salmon, your avocado, your olive oil, your nuts, your seeds, your olives. I mean those are excellent additions to your diet on a daily basis so we start thinking that way. Healthy fats, healthy protein, high quality protein, ideally free range, natural sources and then lots of green. So greens add fiber, they add alkalinizers, they're loaded with nutrients to help support detoxification as well and that's critical to healthy hormone balance, so getting Keto-Green helps with hormonal balance. A typical Keto-Green plate, I get that question often. So what is a typical Keto-Green plate?

I'll give you a few examples. Think of smoked salmon with capers, sliced red onions with sauteed spinach. Beautiful Keto-Green plate. And think of a roasted chicken, you can do your insta-pot chicken, I have several of these recipes on my website at dranna.com, we have a crock pot chicken recipe, so you could crock pot very easy, prepare it in 15 minutes and add in some vegetables, you can add mushrooms, you can add brussel sprouts, you can add squash and onions are one of my favorites as well as adding garlic and herbs, so tumeric, cumin, cracked pepper, [inaudible 00:07:21] and Himalayan sea salt for seasoning options and serve that alongside of guess what? Greens. Greens are vegetables of choice that are low carbohydrate, you could do sliced eggplant or you could saute up some greens or have a green salad or vegetable salad to go alongside of it.

For example, tabouli but instead of using cracked wheat to make tabouli, you could use cauliflower rice or I started chopping up broccoli sprouts because that adds a little texture to the tabouli and add that in with the parsley, tomato, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and onions and it's an amazing alkalinizing detoxifying and also, parsley's a natural dieretic, so that's a perfect side. So when you start thinking when you're making a plate, many times ketogenic plates don't look very healthy or balanced, so you've got to do that conscientiously and it's a discipline and a practice but it's really important. Another question that I get very often is how do I know if I'm doing this right? So I say test don't guess. Check your urinary PH and ketones. It costs pennies a day. I did create urine PH and ketone strips, again, I want to make things simple for me and where there have been no solutions or no answers that's one thing that I'm committed to creating, continue to create easy, simple, natural solutions.

So check your urine PH, but you can get PH paper anywhere, any pharmacy, it's hydrion PH paper and check your urine PH, also check ketones to get into the state of ketosis. So in my book I talk about how we can really push you into the state of ketosis. We stop snacking, so we can start becoming more insulin sensitive as well as increasing the duration of our intermittent fast typically to 13 to 15 hours and then periodical whole day fast, and that will start exercising your ketogenic muscle getting into the state of ketosis. And in my book I go through reasons why you may not be getting there and that's important to do that detective work and see. If you always feel like I'm doing everything right but I'm not getting results, then there's typically something else that has to be discovered, so I encourage you to read my book The Hormone Fix to dig deeper into that. Now another question I get, I had a client write in on my Keto-Green Community page, actually I'm going to share this right now.

I have my Keto-Green Community page on Facebook and it's a great community, let me tell you. We have over 5000 people and you can just join, they'll be a button up here to join the community group. We ask a couple questions and provide community guidelines because we want this to be a nourishing, amazing place where people can feel comfortable asking questions. So this question came in and I loved it. So Page wrote in, she said, "Good morning, my wife and I are following the ten day start up pretty faithfully. She's in the throws of menopause and having terrible hot flashes, I'm thankfully beyond all that. At day three I've already dropped four pounds, but she's put on three, has anyone experienced weight fluctuation at the beginning? It's a little discouraging but thanks for the input." And our community here has gone through and helped to answer, there's many great suggestions in here, but typically what I see in a conversation like this when this is happening, typically what I see is that there's a food sensitivity.

So Page, your wife is probably eating something that her body is sensitive too or having an allergy to and another issue could be that she's not digesting or getting too many calories from fat, getting too much fat and too much protein, which could also keep her from getting into ketosis, which could keep her from losing weight but the weight gain, typically what I see is a food sensitivity and or just to much of the healthy fat when we start. Even if it's healthy, we can have too much of a good thing. And so again, gradually working to transition can make a big difference, so that was a good question. We have some more here in the Keto-Green Community Group, let me share some of these. Cindy [Sitdack 00:11:37], hopefully I said that name right said, "Is there a reason for morning water to be warm?" So in my book The Hormone Fix, I recommend drinking a tall glass of water when you wake up because you want to rehydrate right away, and this will not take you out of a fasting state, this will not interfere with fasting.

You can use a squirt of lemon juice, half to a teaspoon of lemon juice, a teaspoon to a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, I like the unfiltered organic apple cider vinegar or Braggs apple cider vinegar is one of my favorites, and if you've been consistently acidic add an an eighth to a quarter teaspoon of baking soda. Stir that up and drink it up and that will be an alkalinizing way to start your day and boost your body to help with digestion, et cetera. So, Cindy wrote here, "I prefer cold taste but didn't know the significance of the water being warm and if so, does room temp count as warm?" Yes, room temp counts as warm. I don't like you to drink ice water or any icy cold drinks first thing in the morning because that does constrict blood vessels and room temperature seems to help with absorption and digestion better, so that's the reason for that but do and figure out what's working best for you.

Laurie here wrote, she said, "I am confused about the Keto-Green Shake and the Keto Alkalinizing Shake." That's a great question Laurie, I created a new shake this year, chocolate flavor and it's called the Keto-Green Shake, it has nuts and seeds in the combination of the rice P protein blend, so a vegan protein blend but it has nuts and seeds, so it has sunflower seeds, it has pumpkin seeds, it has just a tremendous amount of really nourishing ingredients to support phase one and phase two detoxification, including some greens, including some enzymes, as well as MCT oil to add some extra healthy fat in there. And chocolate flavor, which is something that I really wanted to put in there. So in addition to the sunflower seeds, the sesame seeds, the pumpkin seeds and the rice P protein blend, there's some healthy fats, healthy greens, phase one and phase two detoxifying nutrients that can really help you.

Now also it is zero grams of sugar, it is two Weight Watchers points if you've ever measured Weight Watchers and each scoop is 14 grams of protein. They also come in individual packets, one packet is equivalent to one scoop of my Keto-Green Shake. My Keto Alkalinizing Shake, which I have had and used in my clinic and my practice and online now for almost eight years is also zero grams of sugar, both the Keto-Green and Keto Alkaline Shake have a little bit of monk fruit sweetener in there, but the keto alkalinizing shake has additional phase one and phase two detoxifiers in there and again, very nutritious. It's a vanilla flavor and that ones been around for a long time helping our ladies and yes, men can drink these shakes. Men can eat Mighty Maca, we have kids as young as two years old drinking Mighty Maca and sports teams drinking it as well as world athletes, Olympic athletes drinking Mighty Maca. And so, that's been really, really supportive.

Again, you know my story probably by name about Mighty Maca and how I created it and more of that information's on my website, but that was stemmed from my own healing journey. So those were some of the questions that I got, let's see here. We also in our Keto-Green Community Group will poll our audience and ask specific polls to see what's going on, we've asked a poll in here about keto crotch and 95 nos with five yeses that have experienced it and then there's another 28 that never heard of it, so that's great. Cindy asked, "Is bone broth protein powder? Along with Mighty Maca an acceptable substitute for use?" In the Keto-Green community and in my book I talk about starting your day with a Keto-Green Shake and so, you can use my Keto-Green protein powder definitely, bone broth protein powder, collagen protein power, those are all great options.

I typically know that dairy's a big sensitivity, so I pretty much eliminate dairy in my Ten Day Program in my book as well as in my Breeze Through Menopause Program and so, we try to avoid whey proteins to, so that's one of the things that unless you know that you absolutely have no sensitivity and you're doing great with whey protein, pretty much avoid it and it's not a bad idea to take a break from it anyway for ten days. So using any protein powder that is zero gram sugar or less than five grams of sugar certainly, we really want to stay low carb especially in the morning. Have a little bit of carbs in the evening, that's when I try to enjoy those, enjoy a Keto-Green desert of some sort and enjoy the carbs in the evening but in the day time, especially when you're breaking fast to try to really avoid the carbohydrates in general. Well these are some of the questions that I get in the Keto-Green Community Group and I love that. I love that there's questions here and so many people shoot in an answer.

I want to answer this other question and this is from Regina and she says, "I'm planning to start the Ten Day Keto-Green Detox tomorrow, I do pretty well being alkaline most of the time. I have a couple questions," and Regina asks, "I had issues with low blood sugar all of my life, should I make any adjustments to the meal plan to help with that?" And that's a question I get so often about hypoglycemia. Let me tell you, if you're following the Keto-Green diet, the Keto-Green plate and you're looking at what healthy fats and you're nourishing your body, your exercising to get no snacking in between meals and your exercising the practice of not snacking between meals and that's what I mean by that. That you will start to feel better.

Hypoglycemia symptoms, even if you've had them all your life will diminish and disappear and I can guarantee you it, but go slow knowing that you've had low blood sugar issues during your life and think, "I need healthy fats, healthy protein, lots of good greens and fiber that's going to help decrease any glucose that enters the blood stream," but what happens when you're getting low blood sugar typically from a carbohydrate laden meal, your glucose shoots up, your insulin shoots up to take care of glucose and put it where it needs to go essentially, however if you become more insulin resistant or the higher up insulin shoots in order to address the amount of glucose that is circulating in your system, the lower your blood sugar will go, so we want to stabilize those peaks and valleys throughout the day and the menu plan in my book The Hormone Fix as well as in my Breeze Through Menopause Program we'll help you do that, so just go slow, listen to your body and if you're feeling a little bit of hypoglycemic, think of a slice of avocado, maybe you could do some coconut yogurt, something that's going to have a slow steady reaction to your body.

And another thing to is increasing essential fatty acids, omega 3 taking an omega 3 supplement with your meal, that helps tremendously. That's helped so many of my patients with histories of hypoglycemia as well. And then the question from Regina, her second question, "Is the Mighty Maca Plus for women only or can men take it also?" Yes, men, children, just name it. It is really safe and it's been using it in practice since 2009, and now we have physicians around the world recommending it, but again, everyone is unique, so try it. If for whatever reason it doesn't agree with you, you know that you can always send it back to our company and we will refund you, so that's the benefit and the Might Maca just the 30 plus super foods in there that I've studied, researched and combined in this way have been super beneficial.

So I want to thank you guys for asking your questions and getting on here and being proactive in your health and in your life and I encourage you to keep sending in your questions, join us in the Keto-Green Community Group. Email my team at drannacabeca.com. I'm going to be regularly adding in some question and answer calls to address some of your questions, your most common questions. Thank you all and remember with Coach Talk this is safe place for safe conversation and it's a place where we can share, share what we're going through, share our struggles and I hope you've been enjoying the experts that I bring on board weekly as well as the conversations that go deep into all areas. I also want to thank you very much for rating and reviewing this podcast and sharing it with your friends, it means the world to me. Thank you guys and I'll see you next week.

Dr. Anna Cabeca

Dr. Anna is a Triple Board Certified OB/GYN, Anti-Aging Medicine expert, and author of the best selling book, The Hormone Fix.

Dr. Anna helps women heal the 9 most dreadful symptoms of menopause with natural, safe solutions. Follow her for content on hormonal imbalances, vaginal dryness, menopause (and more) that are medically backed, and created to empower women — not just treat them.